Reading the Fire: Heat and Flame

As discussed in previous articles, fire behavior indicators can be grouped into five general categories: Building, Smoke, Air Track, Heat, and Flame (Figure 1). A simple mnemonic for remembering the categories is B-SAHF ("be safe"). This article focuses on heat and flame indicators.

Caution!
Flames and heat get quite a bit of attention. Flames showing from a couple of windows are sure to increase a firefighters pulse and we often talk about how "hot" a fire was. It is important to remember that while heat and flame are important fire behavior indicators, they provide only part of the picture. There is also a reason why they are last on the B-SAHF list. Flame and heat indicators must be integrated with Building, Smoke, and Air Track indicators to gain a more complete picture of incident conditions.

Heat and Temperature
While all of us have a commonsense understanding of heat and temperature, these concepts are frequently misunderstood. Heat is a form of energy and temperature is a measure of the average amount of thermal energy in a substance or object. Click here for more information on heat and temperature!